Bookslut

April 2005

Dirty Blonde and Half Cuban by Lisa Wixon

Dirty Blonde and Half Cuban, the debut novel of Lisa Wixon, is based
on her wildly successful Havana
Honey series published in Salon.com in 2003 under the character's name,
Alysia Vilar. The book is the first person account of American Vilar’s
search through Havana for her real father. Her mother died of cancer when she
was thirteen and in a deathbed whisper told Alysia that her foreign diplomat,
WASPy, socialite father was not, in fact, her father. Her real father was a
man named Jose Antonio, the love of her mother’s life, and he was waiting
for her in Cuba. Twelve years later Alysia decides to go look for him in Havana
when disaster strikes: a day after she arrives, all her money is stolen and
her visa will not allow her to return to the US for a year. She is forced, by
very real poverty, to join the ranks of Cubanos who deal in prostitution with
foreign tourists to survive, the jineteras -- "jinetera" means jockey
and the men and women who ply this trade are not quite prostitutes, not quite
mistresses, and not quite comfortable enough to be called "kept."

A jinetera will have as many yumas, or foreign lovers, as they can manage at
a time and the more the better. Alysia resigns herself to her fate as a jinetera
and supports herself while she bribes various people to help her look for her
father. Alysia has several trysts and encounters with yumas from different countries
which are often very humorous due to Alysia’s ineptness as a lover and
American hang ups about sex. In fact, Alysia’s biggest problem in Cuba
has nothing to do with affordable housing, a language barrier, living in a Communist
society, or getting enough food to eat. It is that she is Norteamericana and
just doesn’t get it. She can’t dance. She can’t flirt. She
walks like she has a stick up her butt. She worries too much. She is clumsy.
She has guilt that prevents her from enjoying her random sexual encounters with
rich foreign men… at least that is what the Cubanos are telling her. And
the Cubanos are a collection of beautiful, generous, laugh-in-the-face-of-adversity,
fun-loving people.

Wixon paints a picture of Cuba that is easy to fall in love with. The natural
beauty of the country is complemented by the generosity and charm of its people.
She incorporates the darker side of Cuba as well: the black market, the corruption,
the paranoia, and shortages of every kind that are part of everyday life, but
these things are secondary to the story. And Alysia’s story is spellbinding;
a highly educated, beautiful young, white woman who is in Cuba for a noble cause,
paying her way with sex and deception. It’s titillating and that was why
it was so well received in Salon.com when it ran in their now defunct Sex section.
Moving the story along with short bursts, like diary entries, Alysia narrates
her story and intersperses it with flashes of her mother and Jose Antonio’s
torrid affair, her step-father’s coldness, and her very fuzzy memories
of the three years she spent in Cuba after she was born.

Wixon has a propensity to end Alysia’s chapter’s chapters with
overly dramatic punches. You can almost hear the 1950’s movie soundtrack
behind pronouncements like, “'I’m going to miss you,' I said, not
knowing it was the last time I’d ever see her.” or “On it
is scrawled one word: bitch.” Perhaps this is because, like Alysia, Wixon
is Norteamericana and can’t relax into her compelling story just as Alysia
can’t relax into being Cubana. Luckily both of them find their footing
by the end of the novel. In what could have disintegrated into schmaltzy family
reunions, declarations of love, and Hallmark greeting card summaries of Alysia’s
year in Cuba and what she learned, Wixon rises above that and delivers a very
believable, bittersweet ending doing justice to the characters she tended throughout
the novel.